


A Good Team

by vasamalulu



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ
Genre: (maybe), 72 Hours, Alternate Universe, Changmin is a bodyguard with a dream, M/M, Yunho is a kindergarten teacher with a past, inspired by their variety show, of becoming a chef
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2020-01-04 15:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18346454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vasamalulu/pseuds/vasamalulu
Summary: They make a good team in whatever life.





	1. Chapter 1

It came a little bit like an absurd revelation: there is apparently such a thing as having too much money.

It shocked him of course, because Changmin _likes_ money. Moreover, he likes _having_  money.

But this, he thought, is having money on another level completely.

* * *

He was shown through a vast traditional garden that looked like it was plucked out of a television drama, and he thanked the heavens that at least the woman leading him into the receiving room was dressed semi-casually and not at all in a cliched maid costume, or worse, a cliched servant-but-secretly-an-assassin costume. Maybe dramas had it wrong.

The dogs were neither hounds nor Malteses, but a bunch of friendly-looking Nureongis... or maybe they're Jindos? Dogs, anyway.

Unlike in dramas, he hadn't been made to wait and no one made grand entrances with ominous music in the background either.

Instead, he was greeted with a domestic scene of a middle-aged man and two very little children, twins they looked like. Maybe a boy and a girl, considering their hairstyles. Otherwise they matched in everything, down to their expensive shoes.

The children turned around first when the door opened completely and the man looked up from them a fraction later.

"Is this the one who will be protecting Vitamin-sonsaengnim?" the boy studied him critically.

"He doesn't look like much, does he?" the girl tossed her ribboned hair, turning away.

The man admonished the children kindly while inviting him to sit down. A cup of steaming tea appeared in front of him like magic.

"I hope you're not allergic to ginseng tea," the man said, sounding like he didn't actually care either way.

* * *

Vitamin-sonsaengnim turned out to be an honest-to-goodness kindergarten teacher in a middle-class kindergarten that looked very much like the one Changmin had attended way back when. It was a quaint one, very much unlike the idea of upscale kindergartens that Changmin had in his head. Then again, he had never seen, let alone been to, one ever since he graduated from his.

"Look! That's Vitamin-teacher!" the boy squirmed inside his car-seat and slapped the window button so hard the window seemed to just  _drop_ open in surprise. "Vitamin-teacher! Vitamin-teacher!"

The girl had escape her car seat, climbed across Changmin's lap to get into the boy's car seat so she too can wave at her teacher. "Vitamin-teacher! Vitamin-teacher!" she yelled louder than her brother.

"Ji-hoon-a! Ji-yoon-a! _Annyeong_!" A tall slender man called back, from in front of the school gates, his long arms windmilling enthusiastically above his small head, before crouching down to greet another child who had come up to him on the sidewalk, from the other side of the road. A woman--perhaps the child's mother, trailed behind the kid with a wide smile.

Vitamin-teacher held the child up easily and stood up from a full crouch in one fluid motion, lifted the child in a gentle airplane motion and the happy kid screamed "whee whee" with the sounds of laughter echoing from the playground behind.

* * *

The kids all but tumbled out of the car even when the door was not completely open yet, straight into the teacher's wide welcoming hug. Changmin, meanwhile, had to wrestle his seatbelt off.

"Up! Up!" the kids demanded. And with one kid in each arm, Vitamin-teacher lifted them up from the ground effortlessly.

Strong thighs and calves, Changmin noted, which should come quite naturally, considering how many pseudo squats the teacher had to do while greeting the kids in the short span of time Changmin had seen him. Graceful despite his height, he noted, as he watched the teacher twirled on tiptoes, with two kids in his arms, before depositing them into the waiting arms of a fellow teacher. She was a young woman around half of Vitamin-teacher's size, but she caught two wriggling bundles of energy in each of her hands and lifted them out of the way into the school like they weighed nothing.

Changmin thought that kindergarten teachers must all be secretly strong under those garish bright clothes and sturdy denim aprons.

"Hello!"

It took a while for Changmin to realize he was the one being addressed."Ah, hello."

"Are you Ji-hoon and Ji-yoon's new bodyguard?" Gone was the sugary-sweet tone that the teacher used on children. This one held quiet adult authority. The smile was as wide as ever still, though.

"Shim Changmin," he introduced himself with a bow, then held out his hand for a handshake.

"Jung Yunho," the teacher pointed to a huge name tag pinned to the front of his apron--his nickname and name printed in big friendly letters against a picture of a smiling penguin in aviator shades.

"He's not the kids' bodyguard," Hyun-woo (the kids' chauffeur, who didn't seem to be much older than a kid himself) half-yelled from inside the car through a rolled down window.

"Hyun-woo-ssi, good morning!" the teacher and the chauffeur nodded at each other in greeting, and the car left soon after.

"I'm your bodyguard."

"My... what did you say? I don't think I heard you properly."

"I said: I'm your bodyguard."

"Yeah, that's what I thought I heard you said. But why?" The other teachers crowding around them tending to their own respective students were being very unsubtle in their eavesdropping.

Changmin was about to explain when a gaggle of mothers and a children came up to the school. The children were not all for Vitamin-teacher, but they were all all small energetic missiles launching themselves into their respective teachers.

"Why me?" came the question again, once they got into a lull of waiting for the next batch of children--which they could already see rounding the bend down the road. There must be a bus stop somewhere there, Changmin made an educated guess, by the way the arrivals were timed.

"Who knows," Changmin shrugged. "The kids..."

"Ji-yoon and Ji-hoon?"

"Both kids think that you're in trouble or something, and they went to their dad for help."

Apparently, they had been tearful and inconsolable, because there seemed to be a big bad man lurking around the school and he looked dangerous and seemed to be staring at Vitamin-teacher a lot, or so Changmin was told.

They whined for as long and as loud as only children seemed to be able to do, until the Lee patriarch decided he could handle no more. The exasperated patriarch soon bought them the services of a bodyguard in a way that normal fathers would buy a toy to shut a child up.

"What dangerous man?" the teacher asked, one pretty eyebrow lifted in confusion.

The rest of teachers who were shamelessly listening to the conversation shook their heads also. "We didn't see anyone suspicious."

"We're generally a vigilant bunch," one older teacher said. "We have to... you know, with kids. We'll definitely know if there's someone suspicious lurking around. You develop this instinct after a while."

"And we check CCTVs at least twice a day," another teacher, short and friendly, piped in. "Every day."

"At least it's a 'suspicious man', not a 'pink 6-ft kangaroo' like last year," another one said. They all groaned and Changmin felt like he missed an inside joke, somehow.

"What are you going to do, Changmin-ssi?" a middle-aged woman who perhaps only came up to the middle of his chest on a good day walked up to him, all sharp eyes and intimidating aura. It made him take a step back.

"My job, of course," he recovered in record speeds, because he's definitely not a wet-behind-the-ears professional.

"Meaning, you'll be following Yunho around."

"Unfortunately yes," he said. It's not like he wanted this job, too. But the pay was more than good, and did he say it before? Changmin liked money.

"We'll talk later, once the kids are inside. We have rules."

"I can do rules."

Changmin wasn't sure whether he liked the way Vitamin-teacher smiled at him, as though Changmin had eaten all his greens but missed half of his multiplication table.

He was the first to look away, just in time as two school buses rolled to a stop one after the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crap not another WIP, was the first thing I thought when typing this. But I was watching #Keyword BoA when #72 Hours appeared in the other videos section of VLive. And I can't believe I've never seen this variety show before! Is this only on Vlive and nowhere else? Ah, what a hidden gem. I feel like maybe I'm the last person to have not watch it. 
> 
>  
> 
> Let me know what you think of TVXQ and their 72 hours parallel life!


	2. Chapter 2

It first seemed that the Lees had paid him a lot for what should've been a boring free-cash job. He soon found out that he's not paid nearly enough.

"Why do I have to teach, all of a sudden?"

* * *

The sun dipped and the bell rung for the final time, marking the end of the school day. It was an ordeal and a half but finally the last afternoon-batch student boarded the school bus safely. Schedule-wise, Yunho was supposed to be on that bus as chaperone, but apparently Changmin was being a needless spanner thrown at a well-oiled machine, so another teacher from another class had to be quickly drafted to take Yunho's place.

They found themselves ensconced inside the headmistress's-or rather, the principal teacher's--office, which was as cozy as it was intimidating. He felt like he was five all over again and had just made a girl cry.

"Because we can't have you just loiter around and scaring the kids," the principal told him kindly, nudging a cup of tea toward him.

Changmin had quickly found the inside of the kindergarten to be similar to a fortress. Not even parents were allowed in--the furthest they could go was the front glass door. This, whittled his job as bodyguard down to nothing.

"Not to mention sticking out like a sore thumb," she continued.

They had tried to make him pass nondescriptly, like taking him out of his expensively-cut suit (which he swore he rarely wore, and even now only because he had been told he's meeting someone important _and_ filthy rich) and putting him in a borrowed tracksuit.

He then minded his own business in what he thought was the farthest non-intrusive corner of the class. It hadn't taken long for him to be beset by children--followed by crying children. He still didn't know what he did wrong. In his defense, he had never been around this many children at any one time in his life. He couldn't even handle two little sisters, and they were blood related.

So, they made him hide in a portable castle, where he could actually do some work in peace, while stealing occasional glances (also strictly work, he's a professional) at Yunho tending to children. But that lasted all of five minutes, because his employer-twins found out about this, soon toppled the castle, and rolled it across the room with him still in it like a hapless filling of a garish pink gimbap.

There had been a little chaos, as the kids found a new game--namely him--to play with. But Yunho and his co-teacher took control of it fairly quickly, and saved whatever little dignity Changmin had left. Changmin refused to feel bad about disrupting class.

That was a mere hour and a half ago. Felt like it had taken two years off his head.

He dared to glance to the person sitting next to him and found Yunho wincing discretely behind his tea cup, as though the man was thinking the same thing and sharing the same thought.  
  
"In any case, going undercover as an assistant teacher is the best solution for all of us." The principal's tone of voice implied that she had given this matter quite a lot of thought. It still sounded like she watched too much drama, though.

* * *

By the time they got out of the principal's office, Yunho's co-teacher had already gone through half of the classroom cleaning duties, which involved a lot of heavy lifting and elbow grease. Yunho was apologetic, quickly taking the rags out from her hands and telling her to clock out for the day.

"Aren't you going to be late for your you-know-what?" Yunho asked conspiratorially, half-yelling from where he was washing the mop in the adjoining kids restroom, when she didn't seem to be getting ready to leave.

"Is he going to help you?" asked Ms. Co-Teacher, otherwise known as BoA--also called _Gongju-sonsaengim_ , Princess-teacher by the class--a woman prettier than anyone, who overcompensated her lack of height with an overabundance of vibrant regal energy (Changmin had gotten straight into hot water when he blurted out "short" directly to her face, without meaning to).

Changmin listened to them discussing him like he wasn't there and refused to feel offended. To be fair, they were speaking in full volume like he was meant to hear it anyway. He decided to be productive and go around the classroom and took note of the things inside, without the nuisance of children hindering his view.

"This board needs changing," Yunho came up behind him on soft-socked feet. A long arm appeared in his line of vision, one tapered finger pointing at a corkboard weighed down by dozens of childishly-drawn pictures.

Yunho unloaded a stack of paper bearing the children's latest art project, a stamping-with-fruits project, some of which had yet to dry properly, bleeding edible paint and sticky fruit sap all over his shirt sleeves. He regretted changing out of his borrowed tracksuit too soon.

"It's washable paint, you'll be fine," Yunho said like he had been reading Changmin's mind the whole time.

"Ah, also think of a name you want the kids to call you by. You can even pick a nickname."

Whetever it was that Changmin wanted to say died on his tongue and went back down his throat as the vacuum cleaner roared.

* * *

"Are you seriously going to stay with me?"

They took Yunho's car because Changmin had come to school with the Lee twins. Traffic was light, because it was already late at night. The teaching staff had thrown a proper welcome-new-assistant-teacher party despite everything being a ruse. ("Never half-ass anything, even disguises," Yunho said sagely, sounding like some old man completely sloshed out of his mind even though he never drank anything stronger than extra-sugar flavored milk the whole time).

They were in Yunho's car and Changmin was driving because Yunho had left his glasses in the classroom and it was raining heavily that even Vision 20/20 was barely helping. Maybe they should pull aside?

"How long are you going to stay with me?"

"They paid me three months upfront," Changmin answered, but only to stop Yunho from asking more questions. Three months was the minimum to retain his services.

"If you catch that person before then, you keep the rest of the money?" Yunho didn't wait for Changmin's answer. "That's nice." It didn't sound as condescending as Changmin thought it would, so he bit back his tongue.

They lapsed into silence. The street was uncrowded, the street lamps were spaced far enough apart that the dark was almost calming.

* * *

It got brighter all of a sudden that Changmin was startled out of his gourds.

Stealing a glance, he saw Yunho shining his phone's flashlight over a small notebook into which he was writing furiously. "What are you doing?" It couldn't be comfortable, with a small book on one knee, long frame hunched like an arc bridge in a small space, one hand with a pencil, elbow dug into the side of the car, and another hand with a phone, slender fingers angling the light as far away from Changmin as possible.

It was still bright. Changmin found out had a thing for hands.

"Why don't you use the overhead?" Changmin admonished instead and pressed the button above his head.

Nothing.

It was broken probably, because Yunho's car was old and squeaky on a good day, positively rheumatic on a cold rainy day (but everything important worked perfectly, which was true, bless small mercies).

Yunho was still ignoring him, writing furiously like someone afraid an idea might disappear within the span of a breath. Must be something really important, Changmin guessed.

"Why don't you just write down notes on your phone? They have apps for that, don't they?"

"True, but I like this way," Yunho finally spoke, drawing a long line underneath whatever it was he had been writing.

The GPS on Changmin's phone told him to turn right, _right now_ , but he could swear there wasn't a right anywhere.

"You know, I actually called and wrote to the GPS company saying that they made a mistake, because there wasn't a right anywhere until the next junction. But I guess they never did update it."

What do you say to that? Changmin wondered, just as Yunho switched off his own phonelight, then proceeded to fumble in the sudden darkness to put his pencil and notebook in the bag on his lap. Everything fell onto the floor of the car, and Changmin could swear he heard the pencil rolling to the back. Yunho groped around in the dark while he talked. Changmin grudgingly took his own phone and angled its lit face toward Yunho.

Changmin was fascinated by the fact that Yunho was flexible enough to reach underneath his seat to grab the pencil. The GPS finished recalculating his route just in time to stop Changmin from counting the knobs of spine along Yunho's t-shirt covered back.

"Next time, stow everything away before switching off the lights," Changmin nagged when Yunho thanked him.

"What if it was really something out of the Twin's imagination? Won't you just be sticking around for three months for nothing?"

Yunho jumped from one subject to the next as easy as drawing breath, like a frog on a lake of lilypads. Changmin wasn't sure he could ever get used to that.

They had used the 'strange man stalking Vitamin-teacher' as a Stranger Danger teaching moment. Changmin, a careful person by nature and by training, wasn't so sure about teaching children to 'be cautious, but remember, most people are good people' underneath it all.

"Just worry about your job, let me worry about mine," Changmin said, in time to take a sharp corner to the opposite side.

Maybe it's just the distortion of looking at someone's mirror reflection through another mirror on a wet day, but a smiling Yunho in between rain was blinding. Though it might just be the headlights of another car passing beyond.

"I'm just sorry you have to stay with me in the meanwhile."

It sounded only a little bit absurd and earnestly sincere, Changmin didn't know what to think about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cameraman being hidden in plastic castles was the highlight of most episodes for me. I keep worrying about their safety each episode, but I guess the kids learned very quickly not to disturb their work. The kids were really well-raised/well-taught I feel. Can't wait to get to the point of the fic where Changmin gets to show off his cooking prowess. 
> 
> I wonder what your favorite parts of 72 hours are.


	3. Chapter 3

It was an unassuming apartment building, nestled in a complex of other similarly-shaped apartment buildings built within the last twenty or thirty years or so. Yunho's was one of the less shabby ones, although that wasn't saying much either.

They were square-shaped buildings, hollow in the middle like a square doughnut stack, so every door opened to a view of small unkept courtyards and the slivers of sky above. Yunho's apartment building had two basement levels and went twenty floors up, with only the bottom third occupied while the top two thirds had been closed for renovation for five years now. No wonder the quietness was eerie with the random sounds going somewhere above him or in the far distance. There was a sleepy-looking convenience store squished between the elevator bank and a wide flight of stairs.

The elevator opened up immediately, and despite the horrific creaking and swaying common to old and poorly maintained elevators anywhere, it rose up quickly enough to dump near the top of the still-occupied floors. He could already feel the draft of disuse of the upper floors.

"No ghosts, promise," Yunho said as he breezed out of the elevator.

Sometimes when you say there weren't something, it's a sure sign there was. Changmin schooled his face, because he really wasn't worried about angry dead people's souls the least. _Nope_.

* * *

Yunho's door was purple. Not eggplant purple, nor aggressive lavender. It was on the lighter side of the pastels scale, but it's still purple. Powder-coated wood-and-stainless purple-washed door.

"It's faded out a lot, the color," Yunho said, smiling at Changmin's dumbfounded face. "You might not believe it, but it was even brighter when I first moved in years ago. I can't imagine what it was like when the building was first built."

He sounded apologetic for some reason. Looking around, he saw the other doors had colors, too. They seemed randomly colored. One door, toward the end of the corridor, was black.

He leaned back against the railing running the length of the corridor, while Yunho fumbled for his keys. The banister was placed at a perfect height, he thought, liking the way he could stretch and arch his spine as far as possible without plummeting down to the sad one-bare tree-d courtyard below.

* * *

Yunho's bag was small, but apparently it was also a black hole. Changmin could not believe how long it took for the man to locate his keys.

"Have you left it somewhere?" Changmin was this close to break professional politeness.

"No, I'm sure I..."

His speech was cut off by the sound of light stampeding that only a group of impatient ahjummas could make.

 _"Yunho-yah!"_ Three of them called at once, heaving slightly because they had apparently climbed some stairs.

Greetings were made, and Changmin was put under scrutiny straight away. "New assistant teacher" was thrown around a few times, along with "New in town", which led to a few nods.

The sentence "Will be staying with me until he finds a place of his own" only triggered some apartment-granny gossip about that cranky old man in 521, who planned to move out soon to be with the grandchildren. "Although he might as soon croak before he could leave, that man," one ahjumma clearly had no love lost for the man.

Changmin noted how at ease Yunho was with these women, giving appropriate responses even as he was still half-distractedly rooting for an errant key.

"My bulb died," one of the women--602, Changmin remembered the number she gave him--said mournfully. "Come change it for me." It wasn't a request.

"Sure, sure, I'll come to your place after I let my friend settle in, shall I?"

"Now please!"

Yunho's house key materialized like magic, and it took Changmin a while to realize that Yunho had gathered his right palm in his long-fingered ones, and placed a key in the middle of Changmin's open palm.

Yunho's hands were warm this time of year, he noted absently.

It was soon chilly again, because Yunho was being dragged down the corridor toward the stairs by determined ladies.

"Let yourself in! Use whatever you want! Mi casa es su casa!" Yunho yell-whispered, butchering Spanish so badly--even Changmin who actually took Spanish (because of a job a few years ago, but which he kept up ever since) could barely understand that hackneyed cliche.

Yunho's door had a passcode lock and a key lock, and the key didn't look like it had the numbers he needed.

"Wait, what's the passcode?"

"Ah..." Yunho stopped on his tracks and looked back sheepishly, hand on head. "Well, that... I sort of disabled it temporarily because it was acting really weirdly."

Changmin wanted to yell at the man for poor self-preservation skills, but the women beat him to it. They seemed to have more than enough practice at admonishing the man who took all the nagging in good grace. Changmin didn't know if he should be horrified to learn that it wasn't the first time Yunho did something stupid like this.

Password keys were invented for a reason. Millions of dollars went into researching it, millions more to mass produce it. There's a reason why insurance companies insisted on these things before talking about anything else.

"It's not like I have anything valuable worth stealing..."

* * *

The key slotted in only a little easily because of rust and age. It turned, but the lock didn't click or clack in that familiar way to say that the door was unlocking.

Because it was not locked, at all.

It wasn't even closed properly because the whole door gave way under his fingers.

So apparently Yunho had left this morning with neither closing nor locking the door. Someone's going to get a lecturing, Changmin promised himself.

The motion sensor lights near the door picked up his movements and switched on promptly.

It took a while for Changmin's eyes to adjust to the light and what he saw filled him with dread somewhat.

* * *

It was like a typhoon had swept through the small apartment. From his spot near the door, next to a fallen shoe-rack spilling meager pairs of shoes by his feet, Changmin noted how everything not bolted down were on the ground.

Granted, a cursory look told him that the furniture was more on low-grade flimsier side of the equation, so maybe the damage was not as bad as it looked.

Bookshelves laid like a capsized boat next to children's books and workbooks.The coffee table was completely upturned an he could see that someone had drawn something on the table's underside.

Cups, mugs, plates, food, coffee, tea, were all over the floor around the small kitchenette island at the other end of the open plan space.

The sofa was still upright but at an angle as one end was jammed into the particle-board walls.

Changmin fumbled for his phone and scrolled to a number only given to him a few hours ago.

It took him three calls and a few dozen rings before it was picked up.

"Drop whatever you're doing and come back home."

"Does it have to be now? but..."

Changmin could hear the ahjummas tittering in the background.

 _"Now,_ Yunho-ssi," he had to clamp his jaw to stop himself from raising his voice.

There were some fumbling, curses, and a thump, in the way that sounded like Yunho had just leaped off a wobbly ladder and barely missed a footing. There were hushed conversations, and unintelligible apologetic noises mostly from Yunho to the ladies. Every little noise filtered his way from the phone's speaker. Yunho must've forgotten to switch off the phone, and Changmin decided to listen in.

The glass sliding door at the other end of the living room was ajar, night wind blowing briskly, making white voile curtains flutter.

He kept his eyes fixed on a discolored square on the wall, where once a picture frame had hung.

The frame was lying face down underneath it.

* * *

He could hear Yunho bearing down the corridor in steady long-legged strides. The sounds of his footsteps grew louder, matching the ones coming through the phone. The ahjummas were there with him too, matching his pace easily, their curiosities loud enough to hear and maybe wake the dead.

Changmin decided to hang up when the door swung open.

"What's so urgent that..."

Yunho collided into Changmin's back, though neither fell. They stood chest to back, Yunho's breath hitching next to his ear.

"Oh... Wh..."

The ladies exclaimed in a panicked way, and it was enough to break their stupor.

Yunho peeled his shocked self off Changmin's back. "What happened?" he asked, mouth downturned and eyes earnest, looking expectantly at him as though Changmin held all the answers in the universe.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

The ahjummas were half-frightened half-excited for gossip. Yunho was blinking so rapidly like his vision would change half-way. Changmin was trying to come up with a coherent plan of action.

"I should clean up," Yunho was the first to find his tongue. _Though perhaps not his intellect_ , Changmin snorted inwardly. Cleaning up would certainly tamper with the scene, destroy evidence, and basically not a good idea when no one had a clue as to what happened.

"We should call the police," one of the ahjummas piped in.

"And take pictures of the crime scene," 602 Ahjumma joined. When her friends looked at her she merely shrugged and said "What? I watch the occasional true crime stories on cable."

"I'd rather we don't, it's too bothersome," Yunho said resolutely, staring down four sets of baffled gazes and refusing to back down. He crossed his arms in front of his chest for good measure, and stepped around everyone so he could block the hallway against their entry. "I doubt they took anything. I mean, I barely have anything worth their time." Yunho looked at the floor sheepishly. 

This was the first time Changmin had ever heard a possible-burglary victim feeling sorry for having wasted a burglar's time. He didn't know what to do with this information. 

"What if..." the ahjummas tripped over each other's words trying to persuade Yunho to call the cops. They were beginning to make a ruckus, so much so that Changmin was worried other neighbors would soon come out of curiosity.

 _"No,"_ the rebuttal came quick and sharp, forceful enough that it brooked no argument. "Please, you're waking up the neighbors," it was said kindly but firmly, all the while Yunho's whole body language changed and just like that the ahjummas took a step back then held back their words, as though they knew what that stubborn crease across Yunho's brows meant in the long run.

But Changmin was new around here and could use the ignore-card quite well. He stared back, ignoring the ahjummas muttering in the background clearly fascinated by the two men's wordless interaction.

"We're just worried about you," finally the smallest of the three women said from behind her friends, and everyone behind Changmin. The testosterone-flexing staredown was beginning to bore them.

And like a flip of a switch, Yunho smiled, brushed past Changmin like a breeze, and gathered the three women into a hug. "I know," he told them, as he let them go. "And I'm always thankful for it."

"But I'm also tired and I still need to prepare a lot of things for tomorrow, and I can't do any of it with the police around and my home looking like a typhoon went through it."

All of them finally stepped into the apartment proper, barely bothering to change out of their outdoor shoes with whatever mismatched house slippers they could find lying haphazardly near the entrance.

* * *

"Do whatever you need to do, short of calling the cops," Yunho had told him firmly before being dragged away to the cleaning closet by the ahjummas, who then complained loudly at the state of his mop and broom. "Clearly these have never been used, you sloppy boy." Changmin eavesdropped shamelessly all the while taking pictures of the scene on his phone and noting little details down to the smallest specks of dust.

"You can't just use the vacuum cleaner all the time. Sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, scrubbing, waxing, you need to do all of them, not one or the other!"

Like most people, there was a part of Changmin that liked to listen to other people being nagged. He would usually feel guilty soon enough, though. This time, rather unusually, he also felt irritation bubbling up.

He didn't know how long time had passed, but the ahjumma's constant nagging was beginning to grate on his nerves. The longest nagging session he had ever witnessed was partly due to Yunho's fault, Changmin observed wryly, because the man just smiled and nodded all the way through, looking like he could do this for days. Snorting, Changmin returned his attention to a clump of fiber or something caught in cracked wood.

 _Does working with kids everyday really give you patience as a superpower?_ He wondered idly. He decided then that if Yunho was too soft to save himself from the women, then Changmin would do it for him.

"Yunho-ssi, a moment of your time, please?" he called out using his best professional voice. "That is, if the ladies are done with you, yet," he added politely, because the women were looking askew at him. He gave them his most placating smile and he knew it was as foolproof as ever when the ladies merely shooed Yunho to join Changmin.

* * *

They crouched in front of a one-door cupboard lying on its side. A small cube thing with uneven spindly legs and scratched up door that was now completely off the hinges. "These are fibers, I think." He pulled out long clumped strands of white and tan. There were some crumbs too, and when Changmin theorized, jokingly of course, whether common household burglars steal snacks too, Yunho merely laughed loud enough to wake the dead.

"I also found some mixed with other coarser ones elsewhere." It was best, of course, to concentrate on the job at hand.

Underneath books and broken picture frames; on scattered cushions, on or under pushed up cupboards so light it would've been Ikea rejects on a good day; underneath a capsized coffee table that had seen better days and had childish scribbles of happy little stick people that made Yunho's breath hitch for a split second (exclaiming "I forgot this exists" so softly it might be an imagined thing) but which they all chose to ignore.

"Fiber. Natural or Synthetic. Hair. Fur," they both listed the possibilities of those long strands of whatever must've knocked down Yunho's apartment. Either a very clumsy burglar, an incompetent secret agent, or....

"Oh I know!!" Yunho exclaimed after a while.

"Know what?" Changmin shifted on the balls of his feet because his legs wee frankly cramping.

"The culprit of the whole mess," 602 Ahjumma said, sitting down on the side of sideways chair she couldn't bother to right up with a steaming ginseng tea in her hands. "We do too, considering the mess in the kitchen and what is missing from it."

The three ahjummas had been working their magic on Yunho's kitchen, in between scolding Yunho for the tinned food and unhealthy snacks, vowing to restock the fridge once they discovered it to be literally empty with not even a single egg to be found. "Yunho-yah, the fridge is to keep your food cool and fresh, not preserve your hopes and dreams," they had chided the man.

* * *

True enough, Typhoon and Rain had occurred in Yunho's apartment.

Mr. Typhoon was the white and tan border collie from the apartment next door (which shared the same wall as Yunho's). More than anything, Typhoon loved to curl on Yunho's side of the balcony and he knew all the places where Yunho hid all the dog snacks, including the tastier ones in the small side cupboard. Mrs Rain was an oldish sable longhaired cat of indeterminate pedigree that lived downstairs but would steal into Yunho's apartment whenever it wasn't locked. Which happened often enough.

It was not the first time either animals got into his apartment, though they were never destructive when alone. Yunho secretly loved to have one or the other welcome him home; he fed them food from packets and tins of petfood he kept around his house (in the living room, under the television, in the kitchen, or next to his canned ones, and elsewhere he might've forgotten) before he had to grudgingly return them to their owners.

However, today was the first time that the two got in at the same time because Yunho had both not locked his front door _and_ neglected to close the balcony slide doors. And apparently both of them had enough energy to turn a small apartment upside down. "At least we know they don't get along very well together," Yunho summed up, rather well pleased with himself to have come up with that conclusion.

"At least we know you're the one indulging Mrs. Rain in fatty foods. You know she gets fat easily. I'll rat you out, just you wait."

"At least we know it's no burglar or stalker," 602 Ahjumma said, calmly sipping her tea.

"So you saw a stalker, too?" Changmin who had been lounging against a clean wall deleting all the evidence pictures now that the idea of a threat dropped to a minus point, straightened up in a blink of an eye. He also wondered whether it was right for him to delete the pictures after all.

"We did!" The three women said together. "Have you seen the stalker, too?" they crowded around Changmin, hoping that he would give them the answer they sought.

Yunho rolled his eyes. "Why is everyone obsessed with the idea of someone stalking me?" He made a show of straightening the sofa, then pushed the side table back to where it belonged.

"Tell me more," Changmin ignored Yunho's protets and turned his attention fully to the women.

Knowing that he was going to be left alone for a good while, now they were throwing fantastic theories about people stalking him, Yunho pottered about the living room, setting it to rights again. He was never a neat person to begin with, but even this chaos was too much.

He was glad that he had at least left the doors to the bedrooms closed, and that neither Mr Typhoon or Mrs Rain liked to be anywhere near bathrooms.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Between the ahjummas and Changmin, the apartment was quickly put to rights, no thanks to the owner of said apartment whom the four quickly banished to do other things... like preparing for the next day's class.

"What kind of cartoon character would you like for your name tag, Changmin-ssi?" Yunho asked from his seat on the kitchen island, sandwiched as tightly as possible between the table's worn formica top and the tall chair he's sitting in, so the ahjummas could navigate around him freely.

"I don't have any particular preference," Changmin said carelessly, sweeping around the ledge separating the living room from the balcony. He noted how flimsy the door was, how easy it was for people to claw their way in, all the weak security spots that set his teeth on edge. The whole apartment, no the whole building, was a big security nightmare he was sure to have several sleepless nights just running scenarios in his head.

"What kind of nickname would you like, then?"

"Can't it just be my name? It's a perfectly fine name, isn't it?"

"Oh, the children will butcher it," one of the ahjummas called loud enough to be heard over the whine of Yunho's vacuum cleaner. "Chami Chami! I can already hear them."

"I'm sure children nowadays are smarter and less juvenile." He had two younger sisters, both a good deal younger than him. He could swear that they were born know-it-alls, always so adult and put-together. Once the children in Yunho's class learned that he was not a toy, Changmin was sure they'd be nice and put-together, too.

He thought he heard Yunho chuckle. "It's your funeral," he could swear he heard the kindergarden teacher say. But the vacuum cleaner was very loud, and Yunho's Stone Age printer coughed and whirred even louder, if that was even possible.

* * *

The ahjummas left sometime before midnight. 602 came back briefly to drop off some food, "just a little bit for dinner," she said ("you boys must be hungry after all the excitement," she said), and a little bit for breakfast. There were boxes of still-warm rice, a few types of vegetables, a bit of meat, and a few eggs. 

"I have eggs," Yunho told her, as he helped Changmin relieve the burden from 602 ahjumma's hands.

"You _had_ eggs," she amended. "We threw them away. They seemed off. You might get sick from them."

"You're the expert," Yunho conceded quickly. Changmin had the feeling that Yunho had long ago been trained to pick his battles with the women of the apartment block.

"Have the animals' owners come to apologize to you?"

"It's too late at night,"  Yunho said, arranging some mismatched plates on the kitchen table, next to his laptop. He placed the small box of cold cuts on his printer, condensation and all. Changmin could only wince. "But it's not like anything got stolen or irreparably broken. Thanks to you amazing ladies, and thanks to Changmin."

Even the torn door from the cupboard ended up fixed because Changmin knew his way around tools and power tools better than Yunho. "You're a really capable guy, aren't you? Your family and friends are lucky," Yunho turned his earnest gaze and soft voice toward Changmin, and he knew his ears were red from blushing.

He cursed this stick-out-in-every-sense-of-the-word anatomy. He could drink anyone under the table and his face would never turn red. But the slightest compliment would turn his ears bright red like an emergency beacon or two headlights in the dark. 602 cooed at him and he wished the ground would swallow him up.

"Well, I'll leave you boys to eat then. Tomorrow, just heat up those things in the microwave for a very short while, Yunho-ya. No need to burn the building down early in the morning. Love you, bye."

Yunho and the ahjumma exchanged a hug at the door that seemed so cuddly and warm that it made Changmin--who had chosen to stand as far as possible from any possible hug attack--felt a bit jealous and regretful for standing so far away in the first place. He gave her a small wave instead and pretended to be preoccupied with his new name tag, which was lying next to the laptop next to a box of kimchi.

His name was neatly printed using one of those round balloon-like fonts, and a gangly baby deer from a Disney movie was staring back at him with big watery eyes.

"That's Bambi," Yunho said, appearing in his line of sight. The apartment suddenly felt too quiet with only the two of them around, he felt.

"I know. But why? Why Bambi?"

"I just... your eyes look similar, see?" Yunho's long fingers pointed to show what he was talking about. "Kids love Bambi. They'll love you."

"Bambi's mother died," Changmin said quickly, perhaps sharper than he intended.

"She did, didn't she?" Yunho said not missing a beat, from where he stood across the table, dividing rice onto plates, metal spoon clinking against worn porcelain. There was a contemplative air about the way his small head and long neck bowed over his task, hair falling over his eyes. 

"My mom's still around though," Changmin said before he could catch himself. He didn't know why he said that, maybe because he didn't want Yunho getting the wrong idea over his objection. He sat down across of Yunho, who didn't seem to have any idea at all.

"Then, the next time I see her, I'll tell her what a wonderful son she has raised," Yunho finally said.

"Please don't try to placate me like I'm one of your gullible students."

Yunho merely chuckled as he pushed a bottle of water and an empty cup across the table toward Changmin.

* * *

They ate in relative silence. Sometimes Yunho would blurt out something that came into his mind. He said it all quite suddenly, disjointedly, very excitedly--his words and sentences coming and going like a brisk wind.

Above all, Changmin marvelled at how dinner didn't feel awkward at all. He had never liked sitting down for dinner with a client before, finding them tedious during the times he couldn't beg off. 

But this felt different. This felt familiar. As though he'd been doing this for a while. 

 _How curious_ , he thought to himself. But he decided not to make a big deal out of it. He was, after all, a master of adapting to new environments. And Yunho, for all his messy eating, out-there ideas, and loud laugh, surprisingly knew his way with words. 

* * *

They were washing the dishes--Changmin soaping up and Yunho drying them with a clean strawberry-print tea towel--when the older man asked, in that quiet voice of his. "What mascot do you want, then?"

"What mascot what?" the spoon nearly fell out of his fingers.

"Bambi. Let's change it to something you'll like better."

"No... no it's fine, truly... I mean. You know your kids better than I do so if you say Bambi is fine th..." He handed over all the cutleries for Yunho to dry.

"We'll change it," Yunho said in that soft brook-no-argument way of his, while placing the final set of chopsticks on the drying rack with the rest he had wiped so all of those could properly air-dry. 

"You can use the bathroom first. You're welcome to use whatever's in there. Help yourself to the newer stuff under the sink, if you want," Yunho said, leading Changmin down the short hall. "The door sticks a little, so you'll have to force it a bit." He demonstrated what looked like a complicated jiggle with a bit of force. 

Changmin made a mental note to fix it when he had time. 

"What else should I know?" 

"There's not much hot water for anything but a shower. So you wouldn't be able to take a long soak." It had never been a problem when living alone, but with a guest around, one of them was bound to take cold showers. 

They argued a bit about who should go first to enjoy a hot shower after a long day, until they agreed to take turns. It's Changmin's turn today, by virtue of Yunho's "guests first" personal policy. 

* * *

He tried to save water and to shower quickly. He could also hear Yunho potter about intermittently around the apartment. At some point he thought he could hear Yunho repeating, "blankets blankets blankets where are the blankets" like it could help him find them faster.

When he emerged out of the shower, Yunho was back in front of his laptop at the kitchen island. 

"I made you a new name tag!" The man looked so proud of himself, Changmin tried not to laugh. 

"It's Rudolph," Changmin managed to find his civil tongue after a few aborted attempts.

"Correct!" Yunho praised him and sounded sincerely surprised that Changmin got it on the first try.

 _Because of the red nose, idiot,_ his tongue wanted to say, but his brain was civil and polite and already half-way decided that Yunho must be treated nicely. "But why Rudolph?" He asked instead.

"It's a cute Rudolph," Yunho said not answering the question. "The cutest Rudolph I could find on the internet."

"Why are you so fixated with deers?"

Yunho merely laughed out loudly, explosively. 

  
 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I watched Mr Roger's Neighborhood's episode on Death completely randomly online yesterday and somehow this came up. 
> 
> Here's a good starter resource I found, if anyone happens to need it.  
> https://www.fredrogers.org/parents/special-challenges/death.php
> 
> What's your favorite Mr Roger's Neighborhood episode?


	6. Chapter 6

The guest bedroom used to be someone else's bedroom not too long ago. Changmin didn't need anyone to tell him. It was clean and well-preserved, a touch nostalgic. He climbed into a surprisingly comfortable bed, the only bed in the room, and made his own notes from there.

Outside of his door, he could hear Yunho moving around the house. He also heard the faint sound of running water and tried not to wonder about other people's shower habits.

He measured out the room and its furniture in his head, noted the books and bric-a-bracs stacked in one corner and a dusty cardboard box wedged against an odd-angled wall.

He revised his earlier assessment as he went cataloging the room's objects in his head. A two-person room but with collected things for three. He wondered where all of Yunho's housemates had gone to. And whether all three lived here at the same time or in turns. And whether this was the reason behind glint of manic loneliness that he thought he caught in Yunho's gaze.

After a time, he heard the bathroom door being wrestled open. There was that same creaky pop similar to when he had to wrestle that sticking door earlier. He wondered if Yunho would let him repair it.

There was a knock on his door, but nobody pushed it open. He could barely heard the "Rest well, Changmin-ssi" through thin door because Yunho always kept his voice low.

Changmin didn't even bother to answer because he didn't feel like using his vocal cords. He burrowed under his duvet and wonder why he was surprised it smelled clean and homey.

* * *

He was always a light sleeper, something which came in handy for his job. He woke up to the unintelligible murmur of infomercials turned low. It could've been any other odd program or even a drama or movie, of course, but from the general tone, he would bet that it was an a home-shopping channel.

His previous three clients were the same way and it seemed this fourth one wasn't going to break tradition. The one before this was a veteran actress weathering post-natal depression, who stayed up all hours and bought odd things in the dead of night.

She had been on edge; tension and pain bleeding off every pore that even Changmin had found himself struggling to breathe sometimes. It was the first time he ever felt so helpless.

This time, the drone of television from the living room didn't feel as desperate. It just felt like a well-worn habit.

Changmin wasn't sure when he fell asleep again, but he woke up when he felt the air had shifted somewhat. The room had blackout curtains, but light managed to seep through anyway. The room faced just the right angle toward the sun that the temperature shift was enough to bring Changmin up to alertness.

So he woke up from his dream, where he was in-between eating sakuramochi on a very pretty, in-season Fujisan and planning to enjoy jjamppong on Hallasan.

* * *

He found his client curled up on the ratty sofa, half hanging off the edge, with a few cushions wedged between the sofa's back and a severely curled back. Yunho had a long spine and he was curled up like a millipede wheel under a thin day blanket.

The television was still warm to the touch, Changmin noted, so the man must've fallen asleep not so long ago. He wondered whether this was a one-off occurrence or just bad habit.

He kept wondering even as he began taking leftovers and other food from the fridge. And if he kept a close eye on the sleeping man while he heated this and fried that, it was just mere good habit of a protector and nothing else.

His phone beeped once, then the LED light blinked green, meaning he had a confidential message from the office.

He didn't see it.

* * *

Yunho's body clock never failed him but this was the first in such a long time that he was awaken by the scent of food.

A name almost spilled out of his lips but he had enough practice with hiding and diverting. He stopped himself by almost biting through his tongue and blinked tiredly at the shadow in the open kitchen.

"Good morning," he greeted and realized that his new temporary housemate had been looking at him for a while.

"Give me five minutes," Changmin replied, refusing to look away even when he was caught looking. He had never seen a person transitioned from sleep to wakefulness as quickly as Yunho.

"Take your time. I didn't expect you to cook," Yunho said, slipping his feet into some old slippers, uncurling his back with a luxurious stretch. His shirt was big enough that nothing was revealed even though it rode up a good measure.

"Might as well. The Ahjummas left some good food."

"We should buy them something on our way home tonight," Yunho said, all domestic-like, as he shuffled toward the kitchen island, eyes alert under the glasses that hadn't left his face when he slept.

Yunho parked himself a safe distance from the gently hissing gridle of omelet, but close enough that Changmin could tell how Yunho's breath still smelled like mint toothpaste, the same one whose tube laid haphazardly next to the bathroom sink, capless and frustratingly squeezed down the middle.

"You cook really well."

"You've said."

"I know. I'm telling you again."

"I'm also at the age now that I don't need constant reinforcement of my worth or skills."

Yunho merely grinned at him all sunny-like before attending to his self-appointed task of setting the table.

* * *

"Your phone's been blinking for a while now," Yunho said after he swallowed a mouthful of kimchi-tinged omelet. He pointed at the phone with his chopsticks. Changmin blindly reached for his phone, eyes transfixed at Yunho's fingers. Yunho ate with his left hand but wrote with his right, Changmin noted the night before. This habit of the left-handed portion of society always fascinated him. 

Changmin remembered to nod his thanks, and mumbled politely about message from the office around his own mouthful of breakfast. He pressed something too quickly and was horrified to see a full blown standard ID picture of Yunho sprung up on the monitor of his phone.

"Background information about me then?" Yunho said, tone neutral. They just stared at each other from across the opposite ends of the table, over all the food and glasses of orange juice spread between them. Yunho chuckled and looked down, breaking the impromptu staring contest to go cut up his omelet into smaller pieces. "Feel free to ask anything not in there. I don't know how much they manage to dig up about me."

He usually read client files somewhere away from the object of scrutiny, even though he was always sure they had expected it of him to do all sorts of background checks. If anything, those spy movies had somehow normalized these potential of breaches of privacy to the masses.

Somehow, he just didn't feel like going cloak-and-dagger around Yunho, so he merely placed his phone face side up on the table, at an angle he was sure Yunho would be able to see from his seat. The man's height and glasses would help fill the rest.

He scrolled past all the physical details, apparently collected many years ago and bore no resemblance to the whip-thin man blinking myopically at him--or rather at his hand scrolling over his phone.

After a while, Yunho lost interest in the rows of sterile black and white, returning instead to food. Shoveling more rice onto both bowls. "You look like you're a good eater," he said when Changmin tried to politely decline.

One paragraph caught his eye, and Changmin thought he must look comical when he had a spoonful of rice and white fish hovering in front of his mouth and one finger frozen above his LCD screen.

"Wow..." Changmin said and Yunho halted his movement of rising up from his seat, empty bowls and plate collected in his long-fingered hands.

"What?"

"You didn't say."

"Didn't say what?" long legs made short work of the little distance between the kitchen island and the sink. Cheap porcelain clattered against flimsy stainless steel.

"I..." Changmin eyed the list of commendations and allowances that came underneath Jung Yunho's rank and number as a reservist. "The army loves you very much."

"Oh." It was endearing how the back of Yunho's ears pinked a little, his voice hitching a little too. "I don't even understand why they're like that."

"You're not career though."

"They've asked. Once or twice," Yunho tried to deflect this type of scrutiny by turning the tap on as strongly as he could. The sudden drop of water onto the steel basin was jarring. He was sure that the weight of water would've dented the cheap metal. "I know I do well enough in some of the things they test us for, I'm really competitive by nature after all."

Changmin recognized gross understatement when he heard one. The records, written in rote official and administratively bland language as they were, told Changmin just how exceedingly well Yunho did and how much the army wanted Yunho to go career. In another life, Yunho might've even been Changmin's senior at the security agency. Probably up there with their Ace agents.

"But the main reason is because I enjoy it whenever I'm there," Yunho trucked on, oblivious to Changmin's awed silence.

"You enjoy it so much you go in multiple times a year and do well every time," Changmin found it hard to believe that someone could enjoy reservist training they way Yunho seemed to be. He himself only did the bare minimum required of him, put in enough effort so as not to attract ridicule, and _he_ was the one employed in an adjacent industry.

"Not all of my friends can go at the same time. So I go whenever they do. Sometimes it takes multiple visits to finally see them all." A pause so Yunho could scrub at a stubborn bit of burnt egg sticking to the bottom of the pan. _How does it feel to have a lot of friends_ , Changmin wondered to himself, while watching the efficient movements of Yunho's soapy fingers in the meanwhile.

"Besides, I like training the newbies. They're cute." A chuckle and the spell was broken. "Here, let me clean up. Go take a shower."

Changmin looked down to find empty plates. He had finished everything there was to eat on the table. Even the apple he had wanted to leave for Yunho.

"I might be a teacher, but I really don't need to get an apple in the morning, especially from a fellow teacher, Changmin-teacher."

Apparently, just one night in and Changmin's mouth was already running without his brain. The people back at the office would have a field day with this bit of information.

Changmin's last thought before he attempted to drown himself in the shower was, "at least the kindergarten kids are well-protected."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a movie, "Kindergarten Cop" running in the background when I wrote it. Maybe I was influenced by it. But maybe not.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> first day of my new life

They got out of the home exactly one and a half hours before they were expected to be at the kindergarden. 

"Why do we have to leave so early?" Changmin asked as they stood in front of the elevator bank, trying valiantly to change the subject. 

Earlier, Changmin spent the time waiting for Yunho to wrangle all of his teaching materials, trying to fix the front door passcode lock. It had turned out to be a simple problem that he was able to fixed in a jiffy. He had been so proud of his handiwork, simple and easy though it was, that he didn't hear Yunho coming up to stand next to him. He looked up to see Yunho's small face brighten up considerably. It was like staring into the sun.

A sun that could compliment people for as long as an ordinary person needed to breathe. Yunho had been thanking him and praising him non-stop ever since Changmin watched like a hawk to make sure Yunho double-locked the door and set a new password. "Don't tell me," Changmin had said when Yunho turned to look at him to tell him the new number combination. Changmin refused to dwell on the way Yunho's small mouth halted mid-recitation at a perfect O.

"Why? Do you have anything you want to do?" Yunho tilted his head but kept his gaze on the faded red numbers counting to reach their floor. They could take the stairs of course, but they had plenty of teaching materials in plenty of boxes to haul down. Changmin idly wondered whether the whole thing would fit inside Yunho's car.

Changmin thought about the many things he could've done in the house and not all of them involved cleaning. "No," he said. "Just wondering".

"We don't want to be late."

But the drive was only half an hour maximum, Changmin wanted to say, since they're going opposite of the morning rush hour. But the elevator door opened and they needed all their energy to move all their precious cargo and then themselves into the small space.

They were quiet on the way down. Which was arduous because it stopped on every floor.

* * *

The following sequence of events happened on every floor:

The door would open, and a group of people would look like they were ready to step in until they realized there wasn't anymore space for them.

They would look like they were about to scold someone, namely Changmin, who was standing closest to the door. Until they saw Yunho hovering in the background half obscured by a large white bear.

Yunho would bow deeply and apologize for taking up space.

The previously-disgruntled people would just wave it off with a smile.

Yunho would brightly introduce Changmin as his new coworker, as well as someone staying with him, and someone who's good at cooking, but also a really good mechanic. (Somehow Yunho fit half an essay about Changmin's virtues into one breath)

The men and women would smile at him and greeted him kindly, wish him well and congratulated him for his new job.

Changmin would shrink to the sides and press the OPEN button for as long as possible, until the elevator beeped loudly and forced itself close over the din of goodbye-for-nows being exchanged.

* * *

It took them around 15 minutes just to get from Yunho's floor to the ground floor. Another 15 minutes to get to the car parked just across the exit door. And another 15 minutes before they cleared the front gate.

Because not only Yunho had to greet every man, woman, and children, and their pet animals (mostly dogs but also tortoises), he also greeted every tree through the open driver-side window.

Changmin though that perhaps reading too many fairy tales to children had done a number on the guy.

"I'm not doing fairy tales for the kids," he blurted out of nowhere.

"Oh, don't worry, it's usually my job. Boa doesn't like doing it too much, either," Yunho said kindly without shifting his eyes from the road.

They arrived barely on time. "Almost late again, Vitamin-teacher," Boa teased from her spot next to the shoe rack, helping a bonny child shed off her shiny black shoes to change to indoor shoes.

"But never actually late," Yunho grinned, then turned around just in time to receive a child from a beaming grandmother.

* * *

The children were wary of Bambi-sonsaengnim for a grand total of 10 minutes, before they decided he could be easily subdued and climbed upon like a makeshift tree.

(The three teachers had agreed that Rudolf was too difficult on the children's tongues. Although, if he may add: in Changmin's unwanted, unasked, and outnumbered opinion, Bambi was also as bad.)

Arms full and legs weighed down to the ground by a good half dozen giggling and overexcited children, his eyes darted toward where Princess-teacher was tending to a girl's hair. She felt his desperate energy from avross the class and merely lifted her head off her task long enough to smirk at him. "You'll learn how to say no in no time," she said, fingers deftly creating an set of intricate braids on both sides of a delicate head.

Vitamin-teacher was in the adjacent children's toilet, tending to one pooping boy and one girl who had been so upset since she arrived this morning, that she hadn't stopped crying and was now throwing up because of it.

"I think there's something else bothering Ha-yoon," Yunho said, addressing Boa like he was talking about the weather. Ha-yoon had changed her outer dungarees, and was still crying inconsolably into Yunho's shoulders, wetting a big patch of his bright pink sweater with tears, saliva, and snot. Pooping Boy—Yejun, Changmin reminded himself—was back to playing a toy xylophone in a corner. Completely happy to be alone in his tink-tonk-tankle world.

Ha-yoon lifted her head off Yunho's shoulders long enough to sniffle into the air and reach out blindly for Boa. She was still crying when she was transferred into Boa's small hands and short arms. Changmin merely marveled at a child's capacity to cry their lungs out for indeterminate amount of time. The child's face was splotchy and her crying never stopped.

* * *

There was a small counselor and doctor clinic at the end of the short road where the kindergarten stood, and a municipal hospital about three blocks down.

"It's convenient, isn't it?" Yunho remarked, ending his short explanation, as they moved tables around to make room for the mats ahead of the children's english story class. The children all tried to help, but mostly they just made a mess of things. Nevertheless Yunho praised them all for being helpful elves, and Changmin merely kept his head down and did what he was told.

The English teacher for the day turned out to be none other than the principal of the school herself, stern and friendly, and the kind of no-nonsense benevolence that Changmin decided he aspired to be, one day.

Yunho was left wrangling the children onto the mat all by himself when the Principal dragged Changmin out to the hallway.

"How is your first day?"

"It's..." the word 'awful' died on his tongue before it could take form out of his mouth. To be honest, he had been in busy surviving mode that he hadn't had time to contemplate anything. "It's..." he sighed. "It is going."

"Lunch after English," the principal reminded, then nap time for the kids. Changmin just needed to keep his eye and mind on a foreseeable target. Nap time, nap time, he reminded himself. "You know," the principal said conversationally, drawing out the double-u at the end of the sentence as though she hadn't made up her mind on what to task he would give him.

"Yes?"

"The two of us—myself and Yunho-sonsaeng, I mean—can manage the kids. Why don't you go help out in the school kitchen?"

Changmin's relief of being sent away far from children must've shown because the principal laughed keenly. "You don't have to look so eager, Bambi-teacher," and she laughed again when he sputtered at his awful nickname. "Yunho told me that you're good with cooking?"

"I wouldn't say that, but...," he said, blushing to the tips of his ears. "But... thank you?"

"Cooking for children in a school setting is different from cooking elsewhere, even in professional kitchens," the principal merely went ahead with her explanations, sparing Changmin from an awkward situation. He liked people acknowledging his cooking, but he's not quite comfortable with praises just yet. "I don't know what your experience has been, but I think you'll enjoy it and possibly learn something too. A nice reprieve before we send you back to the kids after lunch."

Changmin's world dramatically screeched to a halt at the words _send you back to the kids..._

* * *

Next thing he knew, he was already in a white-washed kitchen, sectioning potatoes...

 


	8. Chapter 8

He felt bad.

On the drive home (to Yunho's home), he kept trying to steal a glance at the man who was trying to keep his car on this side of the road, or just on it for that matter. Yunho wasn't a bad driver, just not the best. And circumstances just made it worse.

He felt bad. Changmin noticed how the wince around Yunho's eyes never disappeared.

"Stop staring," Yunho said, too soft Changmin almost missed it. "Please" was added as an afterthought as Yunho shifted gears. It was a manual stick that was also sticky sometimes. It took two tries as a small truck cut past them. And the wince was back.

"I..."

"And stop apologizing. It was an accident."

"I shouldn't hav...."

"It's fine." A minibus and a car cut past them and they remained quiet until the next red light. Even then, Yunho kept his eyes stubbornly on the plate number of the car in front of them. "Somehow I feel like it'll still happen with or without you..."

"Let me drive."

"Not when you're emotional. I thought bodyguards are supposed to be emotionless."

The light turned orange then green, and Yunho's junk of a car coughed and huffed before it rolled down the streets once again.

"I think you might've mistaken me for Robocop."

There was a bark of laughter from Yunho while Changmin gasped when a tree came too close to the hood of the car. But like an expert in near-misses, Yunho just grinned and guided the car back into traffic. "I'm really ok."

"I can tell," Changmin said sourly, Yunho's reflexes was as good as any. Nobody would believe him that somehow he had found a person with extremely good reflexes who was also extremely clumsy at the same time. "And I'm not emotional anymore. The next available parking spot, pull over."

Yunho didn't say anything, merely pulled the car to a stop in front of a convenient store with a conveniently empty parking space.

* * *

Yunho disappeared inside the store for who knows what a kindergarten teacher of Yunho's stature and experience might need. Changmin had half the intention to accompany him inside, hoping that he could probably help carry the shopping basket or push a cart, but one look at Yunho's frown, he knew that his help was not only unneeded, it would also be unwelcome. He knew he did the right thing when his "I'll wait in the car, don't tarry too long or I'll drive off without you!" was greeted with a wide smile and a sputter of "You can't do that!" followed by "Sure you don't need anything?"

Changmin slid across the middle, deftly maneouvering his long legs past the driving stick and sundry junk that Yunho kept between the two seats, not bothering to get out and around of the car. He was adjusting the back of the seat, the mirrors, when Yunho opened the passenger door, a surprisingly small and half-empty paperbag in his hands.

"Did you get what you need? Is that everything?"

"Yes," was the short reply, as Yunho settled in. They didn't talk but then the car chose this time to rattle hard enough to block out any sound that wasn't screaming-level loud.

"I'm going to take your car to the mechanics, whether you like it or not," Changmin said, screaming-level loud.

He saw Yunho from the corner of his eyes. But Changmin was never a good lip-reader so he just drew his own conclusion. Meanwhile, the traffic and trees outside looked nicer now they weren't always two seconds away from coliding into any of them.

* * *

Changmin helped Yunho change the bandage around his forearm. The cut wasn't deep and it really didn't need anything other than time and a clean and dry environment.

"You make it sound like I'm muesli..." Yunho chuckled, keeping his gaze down on Changmin's agile fingers.

"Did I say it out loud?"

"I think you deliberately said it out loud."

"Store in a cool, dry place, away from dangerous situations..." An ideal situation, Changmin supposed.

They chuckled together at an oddly harmonious pitch. It wasn't half bad and it actually sounded quite nice. They both looked up at the same time after Changmin made the finishing half loop and secured the loose ends of the bandage.

"Thank you," Yunho said, already uncurling his legs from underneath him to stand up and clear up the first aid kit.

"Sit," Changmin rushed onto his and beat Yunho by a milisecond.

"Woof?"

"I...." Suddenly he wondered if Yunho would be offended by him implying that the man was just a big puppy-like person.

"It's okay, Changminah." It came out like Yunho was placating one of his students. Changmin should feel irritated, but he felt none of that. "So, do you like it?"

"W..."

"Cooking at the school kitchen?" Yunho followed him to the bathroom medicine cabinet, then out again to the kitchen island where they, or rather Yunho, had all his teaching materials spreadout. "Do you like it?"

"I... I like it, actually. It's different from cooking for private consumption. And the fact that you're cooking for children, and..." Changmin went a mile a minute, not realizing how Yunho managed to urge him on with well-placed prompts, a nod here and there, an encouraging gesture of long tapered fingers.

"The food supervisor was really happy to have you, they've been struggling for a while."

"The food supervisor... Madame Kang?" Changmin remembered the formidable Swiss-trained battleax of a woman, tall and imposing with her polite Swiss-German-tinted Korean who ran the kitchen efficiently yet without even a sense of pressure.

"Yes, I think she said that your work was flawless."

"Pefect," Changmin amended with a little pride. "But on the slower side." He trailed off quietly.

"You'll get used to it."

* * *

Yunho knew at once, when Changmin did not return to the classroom after lunch break and even after the children's nap time, that somehow the food supervisor had gotten her hands on his bodyguard. The kitchen had been understaffed and underfunded for a while. A competent free-hand like Changmin would be of great help to the kitchen.

Changmin failed to show up even until the last children had been returned to their parents. So Yunho found himself going over to the cookhouse to find Changmin already knee-deep with the rest of the kicthen staff drawing up the children's meals for the next few days.

They had a few sample foods they were tasting, a few still simmering on the stove, some raw vegetables neatly collected on cutting boards or in steel and glass bowls. They had a big board up with plans and notes and money items, and tea brewing in a corner. Yunho helped himself to tea, something he usually did anyway at the end of every working day, then settled against a wall to observe the easy banter everyone was having over sample fruit cups.

Never a man of many words, Changmin was a quiet but attentive presence whose eager body language was telegraphed clearly across the small space.

Madame Kang was the first to spot him hovering by the kettle. 'Yunho-teacher! Hello Hello. Hope you don't mind us hijacking your bodyguard. He's been most helpful. Quite perfect albeit a little slow still."

"I don't mind at all, Madame! I'm glad he's of help to you! But it seems now I will need his help! Boa-teacher is still away and I need some help to clean up the classroom and prepare for tomorrow, if you don't mind?"

That seemed to sober Changmin up from his thoughts. He had been thinking about all the new things he had been learning: nutrition, children allergies, the cost of running a school kitchen... that he had forgotten his original duty, about the reason he was there in the first place.

He tripped off his feet as he tried to get out of his seat, and uncharacteristically made a mess of the kitchen in an effort to not fall flat on his face, which somehow led to a knife slicing Yunho's forearm. No one quite knew how that happened, but happened it did.

Oddly enough, no panic nor pandemonium happened. Wounds were treated, kitchens were cleaned, warnings and lectures were delivered, apologies conveyed. Even Changmin only had to minimally insist on Yunho to sit down and let him do all the cleaning. Yunho compensated him not physically working by being bossy.

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Yunho's forearm wound in Guilty, and the title Guilty but not really the contents of the lyrics (Maybe. For now).


End file.
